🔗 Share this article

For Natalia Molina and third-generation Mexican American, the most memorable moment of the baseball championship did not happen during the tense finale on Saturday, when her squad executed one dramatic comeback feat after another and then prevailing in overtime over the opposing team.

It came in the previous game, when two second-tier players, the Puerto Rican player and Miguel Rojas, pulled off a electrifying, game-winning play that at the same time challenged numerous harmful misconceptions touted about Latinos in recent years.

The moment in itself was stunning: Hernández raced in from left field to snag a ball he at first lost in the bright lights, then threw it to the infield to record another, game-winning play. the second baseman, at second base, caught the ball just a split second before a runner barreled into him, sending him backwards.

This was not merely a remarkable sporting moment, perhaps the decisive turn in momentum in the team's favor after looking for most of the series like the underdog team. To her, it was thrilling, on multiple levels, a badly needed morale boost for Latinos and for the city after a period of immigration raids, security forces monitoring the streets, and a steady stream of negativity from official sources.

"Kike and Miggy put forth this counter-narrative," said Molina. "The world witnessed Latinos showing an infectious pride and joy in what they do, being leaders on the team, having a different kind of masculinity. They're bombastic, they're yelling, they're taking off their shirts."

"This represented such a contrast with what we observe on the news – enforcement actions, Latinos thrown to the ground and chased down. It is so easy to be disheartened right now."

Not that it's entirely straightforward to be a team supporter nowadays – for Molina or for the legions of other fans who show up regularly to home games and occupy as many as 50% of the venue's 50,000 spots per game.

The Mixed Relationship with the Organization

When intensified enforcement operations started in the city in June, and national guard units were sent into the area to react to ensuing demonstrations, two of the local soccer clubs quickly released statements of support with immigrant families – while the baseball team.

The team president stated the organization prefer to steer clear of political issues – a view influenced, possibly, by the fact that a sizable minority of the supporters, even some Hispanic fans, are followers of certain political figures. After significant public pressure, the team later pledged $one million in support for individuals personally impacted by the raids but made no public condemnation of the government.

Official Visit and Past Heritage

Three months earlier, the team did not delay in agreeing to an offer to celebrate their 2024 World Series win at the official residence – a move that sports columnists labeled as "disappointing … weak … and contradictory", given the Dodgers' pride in having been the pioneering professional team to end the racial segregation in the mid-20th century and the regular invocations of that legacy and the values it embodies by officials and current and past athletes. A number of team members such as the coach had expressed unwillingness to travel to the event during the first term but either reconsidered or succumbed to demands from the organization.

Corporate Ownership and Supporter Dilemmas

An additional issue for fans is that the Dodgers are owned by a corporate behemoth, the ownership group, whose investments, as per media reports and its own published financial documents, include a stake in a private prison company that runs detention centers. Guggenheim's leadership has said many times that it wants to remain neutral of political matters, but its detractors say the inaction – and the financial stake – are their own type of compliance to current policies.

All of that add up to considerable mixed feelings among Hispanic fans in particular – feelings that surfaced even in the euphoria of this year's hard-fought championship triumph and the following explosion of Dodgers pride across Los Angeles.

"Can one to support the team?" local columnist one observer reflected at the beginning of the postseason in an elegant essay ruminating on "team loyalty in our blood, but uncertainty in our minds". Galindo was unable to ultimately bring himself to view the World Series, but he still felt deeply, to the point that he believed his one-man boycott must have given the squad the luck it required to win.

Distinguishing the Team from the Management

Numerous fans who have Galindo's misgivings seem to have decided that they can continue to back the team and its lineup of international stars, including the Asian superstar a key player, while pouring scorn on the team's business leadership. Nowhere was this more evident than at the championship parade at the home venue on the following day, when the capacity crowd cheered in approval of the manager and his athletes but booed the team president and the chief executive of the ownership group.

"The executives in suits don't get to take our players from us," Molina said. "We have been with the Dodgers for more time than they have."

Past Background and Community Impact

The issue, however, runs deeper than just the organization's present proprietors. The agreement that brought the former franchise to Los Angeles in the 1950s required the municipality demolishing three working-class Hispanic neighborhoods on a hill above the city center and then transferring the land to the team for a small part of its market value. A song on a 2005 album that documents the events has an low-income worker at the venue stating that the house he forfeited to eviction is now a part of the field.

A prominent commentator, possibly the region's most influential Latino writer and media personality, sees a darker side to the lengthy, problematic relationship between the team and its audience. He calls the team the popular snack of baseball, "a business organization with an undue, even unhealthy following by too many Latinos" that has been exploiting its supporters for years.

"They've acted around Latino followers while picking their pockets with the other for so long because they have been able to avoid consequences," Arellano wrote over the warmer months, when calls to boycott the team over its lack of reaction to the raids were contradicted by the awkward reality that attendance at home games did not dip, even at the height of the protests when downtown LA was subject to a evening restriction.

International Stars and Fan Bonds

Separating the team from its corporate owners is not a simple matter, {